E-book bundle deal: 40 USD OFF at checkout

Take a backgammon masterclass from the masters!

In 2021, Supergrandmaster Mochy and Grandmaster Marc Olsen ran a four-part lecture series as part of the Ultimate Backgammon Championship in Marbella. Their seminars were attended by some of the leading players in the backgammon community and covered the most important and difficult aspects of the game.

Drawing from this material, and in a world-first from Supergrandmaster Mochy, the two authors present their most detailed work to date, outlined in over 400 pages of expert thinking.

Experience the Lectures in Print Form

Every lecture was fastidiously transcribed, including audience questions and the conversations that ensued. What results is akin to a full backgammon curriculum, designed around the needs of real people – intermediates and experts alike - and the difficulties they typically face in real world scenarios.

Backgammon literature often focuses on arcane and complex positions. These are the ones the community enjoys agonizing over, but they seldom appear in actual game play. More equity is thrown away in the mishandling of cubes and checkers in common positions than in the esoteric ones, simply because they occur more frequently. In Backgammon Masterclass, Marc & Mochy emphasize the importance of thinking deeply about more normal positions.

Order out of Chaos

Backgammon is necessarily complex, and at times can seem chaotic and impenetrable. But everything can be understood with reference to simple concepts. In four clearly delineated chapters, Mochy and Marc guide you through some of the most notoriously complex components of backgammon, rendered simple with easy-to-understand descriptions. Every position is analyzed in depth, broken down from both a tactical and strategic point-of-view, on the belief that in order to understand the whole you must understand the sum of its parts.

The authors share their philosophies and easy-to-detect patterns of the game in order to make order of the chaos and guide you to understand strategy in a simpler, yet deeper way.

Inside these pages you will learn:

Strategic Visualization: how to leverage pattern recognition to quickly understand game plans in opening positions

Backgame Strategy: how to handle the paradoxical checker play and cube action that occur in difficult backgame formations

Game Plan Dynamics: how to analyze the characteristics of each game plan and respond strategically

Cube Action in Undefined Positions: how to master the cube in ambiguous middle game positions

You will also find:

• Over 200 problems positions, each meticulously analyzed
• Detailed explanations of equity, volatility, timing, purity, prime value and many other vital concepts
• Real world examples from live matches, faced by Marc & Mochy
• Personal anecdotes describing their thought processes in critical game junctures
• Several new techniques you can take immediately into your next game

And much more!

A New Language of Backgammon

With academic precision, Mochy and Marc guide you through the nuances of Priming, Blitzing, Racing and Contact positions. The book is brimming with positions, but each chapter goes into detail about the relevant theory before applying it to an example. The result is not just an improved understanding of the positions themselves, but a new bank of theoretical knowledge you can take forward into every game. It’s a new language of backgammon.

With well-paced descriptions, Marc & Mochy equip you with a vernacular that will immediately improve your gameplay. You will learn new ways to describe Blitzes, new terminology to distinguish front positions from back positions, and better ways to articulate concepts like Prime Value, Racing Efficiency, and many more.

This book is aimed at elevating the game play of seasoned players. If you’re an intermediate looking to get from a PR 9 to a PR 4, jump into the Masterclass and let Marc & Mochy take you back to school!